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German digital signage ban prompts confusion

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Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#271

Post by someguydave »

cardanome wrote: post #144
tpmx wrote: post #6

Quoted post unavailable.

The German Green Party was basically founded on anti-nuclear sentiment. The older members see it as their absolute life goal to stop nuclear power. They would rather see everything burn to the ground than change their mind. As long as they are in government any compromise will be difficult. Also, the situation in Germany is much worse than people from the outside think. Our best-case scenarios actually plan for prett…

> The German Green Party was basically founded on anti-nuclear sentiment.

As an American it is not hard to see how these hardened anti-nuclear activists in Germany benefit Russia. It is also not hard to see the close political and historic proximity between the Soviet Union and the Green party.

It seems that average Germans do not make that connection. Why?

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#272

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

phh wrote: post #254
adrianN wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now gas plants are running to stabilize the grid in France...

Uh, as far as I know, that's forever been the case? Nuclear is too slow to react to events, so we always need some safety margin that gas can provide?

France's issues with nuclear are long lasting. They are running only 24 out of 56 power plants today and a lot of that outage is ongoing for many months. France is a net importer for almost a year I believe which is untypical for the country which normally exports cheap nuclear electricity.

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#273

Post by mschuster91 »

tjansen wrote: post #263
mschuster91 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would of course not be in favor of nuclear power. A new nuclear plant takes well over a decade to build - it makes way more economical sense to build renewable power plants because they can be ready far faster and pose less danger and waste to our children.

> I would of course not be in favor of nuclear power. Ok, let's say I could convince you that it is possible to store nuclear waste safely, and show you that building up wind power takes at least as long. Could I convince you then?

No, because of the financial risks involved in constructing, operating and getting rid of them. The costs associated with Fukushima are estimated to be at least 200 billion dollars [1], Chernobyl 235 billion dollars [2].

Even leaving out disaster scenarios: A modern EPR nuclear power plant is at ~1.6 GW [3] at a cost of 11 billion euros, taking a decade or more to build, and about a billion dollars to tear down [4]. A wind park half the size costs two billion dollars in two to five years [5], has less risks in construction, no risk at all of a catastrophic failure, and assuming 80€/kWh in teardown costs [6] 16 million € for the teardown.

That means wind power at a capacity factor of 0.4-0.5 [7] (meaning, you need two of them to achieve the same available capacity to the grid on average) is half as expensive as a nuclear power plant even when ignoring the efficiencies that building at scale brings with it and has virtually no risks attached. Financially, it's absolute irresponsibility to go nuclear.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253929/

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/chernobyl...

[3] https://taz.de/Finnischer-Reaktor-geht-ans-Netz/!5829751/

[4] https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiewend...

[5] https://renewablesnow.com/news/construction-starts-on-800-mw...

[6] https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Parlamentarische-Anfragen/2...

[7] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volllaststunde

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#274

Post by someguydave »

DocTomoe wrote: post #245
cardanome wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German Green Party was basically founded on anti-nuclear sentiment. The older members see it as their absolute life goal to stop nuclear power. They would rather see everything burn to the ground than change their mind. As long as they are in government any compromise will be difficult. Also, the situation in Germany is much worse than people from the outside think. Our best-case scenarios actually plan for prett…

> Other than hoping for a early peace in Ukraine I don't really anything that could solve the issues. I guess we will just have to tough it out. Don't worry. The government is setting up all the right parameters for a revolution to replace them. Large parts of Germany, especially in the already government-critical east, are dependant on gas. Let October be the first cold month that hits us ... and the first grandma w…

So you think Germans will not blame Russia for problems caused by the lack of Russian gas?

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#275

Post by tjansen »

mschuster91 wrote: post #264
tjansen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Install enough windmills across the entire coastal areas of Europe, That's completely unrealistic. There are times when in all of Europe there is little to no wind. Certainly not enough that one region can provide enough power for all of Europe. Maybe it's possible in China, I don't now their climate, but even they are planning to increase the number of nuclear power plants.

We need a complete transformation of our power usage in any case, both to save energy demand and to make the grid more flexible: - insulate buildings so that they better retain heat. This one is massive - over a third of all energy consumption goes towards buildings [1]! - promote heat pumps (either to air or ground) because these are far more energy efficient for air conditioning and hot water generation - help poor…

Just a few comments:

- the things you list are insanely expensive (just keep that in mind next time you say that nuclear power is expensive... you also need to figure these costs in when comparing to EE, because you wouldn't need to do this with nuclear)

- PV with battery storage is great for autarky and reducing fossils, but won't reduce the need for base load after a week without sun in winter, when all the batteries are empty..

- things like heat pumps that replace fossils will increase electricity consumption. I think current estimates are that electricity consumption may increase 50-100%.

- there is just not a lot of potential for additional renewable base load in Germany. Bio gas, hydro, geothermal.. they are all pretty must at their limits. there is just no way around either burning fossils, using nuclear or having an insane amount of storage.

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#276

Post by ZeroGravitas »

extropy wrote: post #256
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long term, the merit order makes sense. All those plants make the max price, so if you can think of a way to cheaply generate power when it is expensive you get paid the high gas price up until all gas is removed from the market. Short term, if a war or embargo is driving up gas prices, it still makes sense to charge high prices, because that gives people an incentive to not use electricity and so saves on the restri…

Are you sure all plants get to sell at spot price? Doesn't that encourage collusion to generate artificial scarcity - all participants benefit from it?

Yes, this is actually why the Tesla Big Battery in Australia was so cost effective, it stopped gas plants from manipulating the prices:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/how-tesla...

> The big gas generators – even though they have 10 times more capacity than is required – have systematically rorted the situation, sometimes charging up to $7m a day for a service that normally comes at one-tenth of the price.

> (You can read reports on how they do it here, here and here, and for a more detailed explanation at the bottom of this story.)

> The difference in January was that there is a new player in the market: Tesla. The company’s big battery, officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, bid into the market to ensure that prices stayed reasonable, as predicted last year.

> Rather than jumping up to prices of around $11,500 and $14,000/MW, the bidding of the Tesla big battery – and, in a major new development, the adjoining Hornsdale windfarm – helped (after an initial spike) to keep them at around $270/MW.

> This saved several million dollars in FCAS charges, which are paid by other generators and big energy users, in a single day.

> And that’s not the only impact. According to state government’s advisor, Frontier Economics, the average price of FCAS fell by around 75% in December from the same month the previous year. Market players are delighted, and consumers should be too, because they will ultimately benefit.

Of course, just decent regulatory oversight can stop this kind of thing too, but fossil fuel producers seem to be really against that kind of thing for some reason.

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#278

Post by [deleted] »

tjansen wrote: post #263
mschuster91 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would of course not be in favor of nuclear power. A new nuclear plant takes well over a decade to build - it makes way more economical sense to build renewable power plants because they can be ready far faster and pose less danger and waste to our children.

> I would of course not be in favor of nuclear power. Ok, let's say I could convince you that it is possible to store nuclear waste safely, and show you that building up wind power takes at least as long. Could I convince you then?

[deleted]

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#279

Post by ivan_gammel »

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #266
ivan_gammel wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand your argument. We do not use personal cars as often as USA or some other countries, instead relying more on public transportation and bikes - as a result, electricity costs for transportation are quite low for individual households. What's your point? That less than 25% of population do not eat healthy and this is somehow relevant to the conversation?

Among the EU, germans drive more km per car than anyone else except Austria (data from 2000, can't find newer). Among the EU, Germans rank 6th on car ownership per capita (2020 data). Going these together, and it shows within the EU, Germans are the on the top of km per capita and not 'we drive less than others' (except maybe the US) Your reply to someone asking about charging their EV(thus need to drive) was that in…

Data from 2000 is missing two decades of economic growth in Eastern Europe and major EU-funded investments in infrastructure in that region. But let's assume, Germany is still high in the ranks. What does it prove? In Europe the life style from Dublin to Warsaw isn't that different: we often live in an apartment rather than in a house in suburb, we rely on public transportation and have great networks, using a bike is a norm in many cities etc. This all means that electricity budget of an individual household is unlikely to include EV charging at the moment. This will be different from USA, where having individual house and traveling by cars is often the only option. So, what's your point exactly?

Re: German digital signage ban prompts confusion

#280

Post by freilanzer »

lm28469 wrote: post #269
freilanzer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Energy can be saved here that is needlessly wasted.

It barely delays the inevitable, it's less than a drop in the bucket, everything you gain there will be instantly counteracted 10 fold somewhere else because we don't want to face reality. But sure, let's stop using plastic straws and switch off our routers at night while we continue absolutely ravaging this planet

This is part of "ravaging our planet". And if it will be counteracted then everything is useless anyway.
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